"I'm off to my tower, and then to bed."

The half-elven bard pushed a laugh through his fine nostrils. "So that's why you bought yourself a manor with a fine high keep."

"In part," she said, rising and smoothing her gown. It was a gesture of surprising femininity from one whose hands were callused from gripping a sword-hilt.

"Ill never understand the fascination the tiny lights in the sky hold for you, Zaranda," Farlorn said, shaking his head. "They're lovely, aye, and suitable for illuminating lovers and inspiring song. But they're no more than jewels set in a crystal sphere; all know this."

"Perhaps," said Zaranda, frowning slightly. Master of words as well as melodies, Farlorn seldom said anything without good reason, perhaps reasons in layers. The remark he tossed off about the stars illuminating lovers cut close; she'd been sleeping alone for a long time.

Once, long ago, Farlorn the Handsome had been Zaranda's lover. Briefly. They had parted ways and not seen one another again for years. Then, when she was gathering up the risky expedition to Thay that pre-ceded her current journey in the bustling Sembian port of Urmlaspyr, she had chanced to meet him again in an open-air market.

He professed himself willing to undertake an adventure or two. He seemed changed, not quite as ebullient, a shade more somber. But he was a master of strata-gem and diplomacy; his jests and songs and tales of wonder could do as much for morale on a long, hard trail as a thrown-open cask of gold; he had the elven stealth in his feet, and his fingers were as nimble wielding his sword and dagger as they were at plying the frets of his yarting. Perhaps the change was due to nothing more than age, though the years lay almost as lightly on him as his wild elf kinfolk-more lightly.even than on Zaranda, who wore her winters well. In any event, she had invited him to join her company readily enough, and had already had several occasions to be glad of her choice. And still… and still, something about him troubled her.

"Perhaps she seeks to read her fortune in the stars," said the father indulgently. In a mild sort of way, II-mater disapproved of astrology. The common folk of Faerun suspected it was one of those proscriptions laid down by the god so his servants could feel as if they held the moral high ground in dealing with weaker souls.

"No, Father," Zaranda said. "I misdoubt, somehow, I'd be well served in knowing my future."

The priest raised his eyebrows. "Why, child, most of humanity and demihumanity alike would pay most handsomely for an accurate augury of what the future holds in store."

"Not Zaranda," the bard said, smiling halfway. "She delights in differing from everybody else. Contrary is our Zaranda Star."

She gave him a look. He had one leg, well-turned beneath her gown, thrown over an arm of the chair, and a golden goblet in his hand.

"I don't believe we travel fixed, immutable paths, like oxen yoked to a grindstone," she said. "And anyway nо stars, whether jewels in crystal or the suns of distant worlds, control my destiny. That I do myself." Father Pelletyr shook his head almost mournfully. "Ah, Zaranda, what if everybody felt the way you do? We'd have chaos."

Farlorn laughed, a sound like a golden bell tolling, Zaranda remembered, fugitive, how once that laugh could. melt her heart. She wondered why it was no longer so.

"Chaos is Zaranda's natural element, like water to an eel," he said.

She looked at him again, carefully, as if by the force of her gaze she could ascertain whether his words held a hidden sting. But her long-abandoned studies had given her no magic for that. For his part, the bard was adept at hiding his true feelings behind an easy smile.

She wondered, briefly, if it still rankled him that she, not he, had terminated their affair.

She yawned, covered her mouth with a hand that was slim and graceful for all its strength. Such speculation added no gold to her coffers. That brand of blunt practicality would have made Father Pelletyr sigh for the state of her soul. But she was, after all, a merchant. The bottom line was that she was tired.

"I'm going to bed," she said.

And she left them there, the stout priest gazing contemplatively into the candle flame and Farlorn staring into the depths of his goblet as if he caught a glimpse of his own future there, among the dregs of Zaranda's wine.

3

Her own bedchamber nestled high in the tower, right beneath her top-level observatory. This served a multiplicity of purposes, not least of which was that if things went severely south in a hurry, she could defend her chambers single-handedly for quite a while. In Tethyr one couldn't take for granted that such things wouldn't happen. This fact accorded well with life as Zaranda had known it all along, so it caused her small discomfort.

"Good evening, Sorceress," said the brazen head on her chest of drawers as she descended the steps – which had uncomfortably high risers, even for one possessed of her length of leg – from her observatory.

"Good evening, head," she said.

The breeze through the open but bar-crossed window was cool and sweet and carried the song of a night-bird in with it.

"You are troubled," the head said.

She let the comment pass. The head was quite correct, it was a very perceptive brazen head. She was al-lowing herself to worry about money and, in particular, her lack of it. If she didn't realize every farthing of the profit she anticipated from her current enterprise, she would at the least lose Morninggold. Her normal specific for such concerns was violent exercise, but the sheer exhaustion that hung on her shoulders like a leaden shroud precluded that.

Life was so much simpler when I was a mere warrior, with nothing to trouble myself over save whom I might next have to swing my sword against… As soon as she thought it, she knew it was a lie, and faintly ridiculous; the way of the sword, whether as adventurer, mercenary, or even successful war leader against the nomad Tuigan, was far from carefree. Someone, possibly resident of another world, plane, or even time-Faerun being uncommonly porous to artifacts, ideas, and even visitors from such places-had once de-scribed life as hours of boredom interspersed with moments of sheer terror.

That expressed it rather well. Yet she knew that wasn't full truth either. The warrior's life had its re-wards. Battle was terrifying, but it was also exhilarating, filled with wild freedom and fury difficult to capture elsewhere. That was why Zaranda had not entirely forgone the sword when she made the latest change in her life and career-that and the fact that the world was, after all, a risky sort of place.

The truth, Zaranda, she told herself, is that you got bored with the life and decided to settle down. And look how that's turned out.

"I can help," the head intoned. Its eyes flashed a beguiling yellow.

Zaranda glanced at it in irritation. It was her preference to sleep unclothed, a fondness she found impractical to indulge on the trail amid an exclusively male contingent of caravan guards and muleteers, and she had been looking forward to that luxury tonight in her own bed in her own secure keep. Now it occurred to her that she was hardly prepared to disrobe with that thing staring unblinking at her from her chest of drawers, which was ornamented with grinning goblin heads carved in bold relief.

"Be silent," she told the head, "or I'll put you back in your chest."

She had ordered the chests containing the truly powerful magic items conveyed to her chamber for security. Perhaps the rarest, most powerful, and most nearly priceless of all was the brazen head. The product of a mage whose.bones had long decayed to dust and scattered on the winds a dragon's age ago, before Elminster was more than a gleam in his father's eye, the head was the bust of a man acerbly handsome, with a scholar's brow and an ascetic's narrow, bearded face. Unfortunately, it had also a satyr's sensibilities which was why Zaranda was going to be sleeping in her nightgown tonight.